Chapter 18
Statistical Characterization of Antennas in BANs
18.1 Motivation
Body Area Networks (BANs) are at the heart of the next generation of wireless and mobile systems, linking personalization and convergence, through a network of sensors, either wearable or implanted into the human body. The integration of these sensors into compact devices, together with wireless gateways, ubiquitous communications and penetration of wireless technologies, brings enormous potential mobility solutions [1]. BANs have a plentiful range of potential applications, like healthcare and patient monitoring, sports monitoring, security/military/space usage, and business and multimedia entertainment, among others. The range of BAN applications emphasizes its interdisciplinary feature.
In healthcare, BANs can be applied to typical monitoring of vital parameters purposes, providing real time readings (i.e. electrocardiogram, electroencephalography, respiratory rate, and temperature of body), which not only make the monitoring more comfortable for the patient, but also save medical personnel's time. BANs may allow the detection of early signs of disease, and the monitoring of transient or infrequent events. Patient and elderly people monitoring in home environments is another attractive area.
In sports, BANs may be used to monitor fitness-related activities, including several sensors for measuring different ...
Get LTE-Advanced and Next Generation Wireless Networks: Channel Modelling and Propagation now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
